Early Life and Education
DeMint was born in Greenville, South Carolina, one of four children. His parents, Betty W. (née Rawlings) and Thomas Eugene DeMint, divorced when he was five years old. Following the divorce, Betty DeMint operated a dance studio out of the family's home.
DeMint was educated at Christ Church Episcopal School and Wade Hampton High School in Greenville. DeMint played drums for a cover band called Salt & Pepper. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Tennessee, where he was a part of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, and received a MBA from Clemson University.
DeMint's wife, the former Debbie Henderson, is one of three children of Greenville advertising entrepreneur James Marvin Henderson, Sr. (1921-1995). Henderson was the 1970 Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina, having run on the unsuccessful ticket headed by gubernatorial standard-bearer, then U.S. Representative Albert W. Watson. Henderson was later the assistant to Postmaster General Winton M. Blount in the administration of U.S. President Richard M. Nixon. He also headed the Nixon reelection committee in South Carolina in 1972.
Read more about this topic: Jim DeMint
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“As for the graces of expression, a great thought is never found in a mean dress; but ... the nine Muses and the three Graces will have conspired to clothe it in fit phrase. Its education has always been liberal, and its implied wit can endow a college.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)